Baltimore needs to grow and change to survive

“If it rained soup in Ireland, the Irish would come out with forks.”

Once neatly stated by Brendan Behan as if you were sitting next to him today at White Horse and asking yourself if you weren’t the wiser for hearing it.  Though Behan is dead almost 50 years, his thoughts currently ascribe to any and many among us.  For as President Obama tried the other week to broker a common goal with Israeli’s and Palestinian’s, we in the United States argue whether more guns is a greater good than more jobs.  Oh, the simplicity of idiots.

While many eyes have been focused on the case before the U.S. Supreme Court, others roll theirs at the NRA for again offering to arm overworked grammar school teachers.  Be reminded, the ongoing assault on our common sense will continue long after the Court and Congress have made their decisions.  From Washington to the civic association, the amadans will still be in our midst.

If anyone in Congress is worthy of Behan’s words for his countrymen, it is Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota.  After making the claim that President Obama lives a lavish lifestyle in a White House that somehow costs less to run than under President Bush, I fear her seemingly lifelong delusional temperament will soon have her telling us eggs come out of the shell scrambled, like her head blistering logic.

In second place was democratic Senator Harry Reid of Nevada.  On the Senate floor, Reid attempted to tie the recent training deaths in Nevada of seven U.S. Marines with the ‘sequester’ of funding currently overtaking the U.S. budget.  While his aides later qualified the Senator’s statement to infer he didn’t intend to politicize the deaths in Nevada, there was no apology forthcoming.

A divided Congress?  Reid and Bachman, both of whom claim a special kinship with their Lord, are unbearably loathsome hacks and a reminder of how removed the supposedly ‘divided’ members of Congress, 535 in all, is from a nation of over 300 million.  Only those who claim a media bias of the Left could be as far afield.  They choose to ignore their own kinship with Reverend Al Sharpton, who built a ‘blame the media’ career over 25 years.

Narrow mindedness is not confined to the politician.  In Baltimore, most neighborhoods haven’t got a nearby shoe repair, dry cleaner or a corner store that doesn’t do most of their trade in alcohol and scratch tickets.  Yet in Charles Village, one of the few veritably safe, well populated and walkable urban neighborhoods, there is a civic push against having a proper supermarket along one of its main commercial corridors.

Here’s the deal:  developers for the west side of the 3200 block of Saint Paul Street, a now empty square block away from Johns Hopkins University, will offer ground floor retail in a complex to include apartments above, plus parking.  As anchor of the retail hub, they proposed a supermarket that could serve both the neighborhood and the university.

At a community meeting held last week, residents and the Charles Village Civic Association came out vehemently against the idea of a supermarket.  They fear competition will force long standing Eddie’s Market, a small unionized food market, out of business.  Eddie’s ownership has also declined the offer of a prime location within the new development.

Amid the evenings’ defense of Eddie’s and harsh words for the developers, two speakers stood out.  The first was Debra Evans, co chair of Better Waverly Community Association.  Evans expressed worry that the unstated color line along 33^rd Street as it crosses Greenmount Avenue may again rise.  Since the Giant Supermarket opened several years ago along 33^rd Street, east of Greenmount, white shoppers have crossed over the avenue, thereby integrating with black shoppers.  With a new supermarket in the heart of Charles Village, she fears white shoppers may again choose to shop in a largely white section of the neighborhood.

The second speaker of note was Eddie’s owner, Jerry Gordon.  He stated the worth of Eddie’s in being local, always open and eminently reachable by foot.  Jerry’s passionate plea to save a family business that has survived hopefully the worst of Baltimore’s decline was heralded by an audience largely in his favor.

The tone of the meeting in Charles Village, as I live there, fascinates on so many fronts and says so much about our city.  First, Ms. Evans and Mr. Gordon’s arguments against the new supermarket have validity.  Still, one must ask, is either fear comparable to Baltimoreans’ need of amenities that currently reside only in our suburbs?  For example, has anyone offered Trader Joe’s a place in the St. Paul Street development?

If Trader Joe’s came to Charles Village, Eddie’s Market would surely be forced to change.  Trader Joe’s offer fairly healthy food at more than reasonable prices and would be the only branch of the national chain within city limits.  While they are non union, they do offer good wages and a strong health insurance program for their employees.  As a result, Eddie’s may have to become more caterer and gourmand than simply an undersized local food market with a good deli.  Is this a bad thing?

Second, while many neighborhoods in Baltimore, such as Howard Park in the northwest, are begging and fighting for urban amenities they rightly deserve, Charles Villagers are saying no.  In ignoring how Charles Village semi-surrounds one of the pre-eminent universities on earth, with many of its students living in the neighborhood, they ignore that they live within a natural economic hub.

One can look to Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass, Columbia University in upper Manhattan or American University on Wisconsin Avenue in Washington D.C., to see the sustainable wealth in amenities that flow from the money in and around these campuses.  And in each of these urban academic neighborhoods, as commerce has grown, so has public safety.   Just the same, we must use Johns Hopkins to our social and economic benefit.

In Charles Village, (see feature photo above)  education and liberalism of thought is supposedly prized.  Yet, the neighborhood is saying no to jobs and commerce in a growth model that can be exponential and replicated all across Baltimore.  As a result, many of us will continue to shop outside the city line for what we cannot get at Eddie’s, with tax dollars going to county coffers.  Charles Villagers, meanwhile, will have claimed a myopic victory for smallness yet wonder why Baltimore isn’t getting safer or wealthier.

In Baltimore we ask, nay demand, that the poorest of us in this city and their children rise out of their squalor and follow the precepts of the American republic.  That personal growth through education is valued and that competition forces the best to rise to the top.  Yet, in Charles Village, competition and change is the last thing on anyone’s mind.  Like the understandable fear in McElderry Park, where bodies drop more regularly than tree buds in spring, Charles Villagers think they live in isolation.  They do not.

We all live within the City of Baltimore.  And what we do in Charles Village reflects all across town, regardless of our presumed isolation.  If we cannot ask Eddie’s Market to adapt in a city that must grow and change to survive, how we can ask the poorest of us to do the same?  How can we expect change from those of us who make our streets unsafe when we will not grasp the nettle and bring jobs and commerce to the city and those same people?

“The fault” said Cassius in ‘Julius Caesar’, “lies not in the stars but in ourselves, that we are underlings.”  If this logic rings hollow to us underlings, if we have such antipathy toward change for the benefit of all, then we might as well go outside with our forks, like the Irish.

It’s starting to rain.